Collaboration is more than just teamwork. It’s a dance of trust and creativity, where individuals come together to share their unique perspectives and talents to create something truly extraordinary.
When collaboration is done well, it can help to break down silos, foster innovation, and lead to breakthroughs that would never have been possible by working alone.
But collaboration isn’t always easy. It requires a willingness to trust others, to open yourself up to new ideas, and often to be vulnerable. It also requires effective communication, respect, and accountability. As President of ServingIntel, I’m proud of our unique way of collaborating with customers across functions and collaborating throughout the senior living supply chain. Our unique recipe and commitment to collaboration has been carefully crafted over the years, and it’s based on the essential ingredients referenced above but perhaps most importantly, identifying shared goals.
Shared goals are essential for motivating and aligning everyone involved in collaboration. When customers and ServingIntel have a shared understanding of the goals, we can work together more effectively to achieve them. We establish shared goals by working closely with our customers to understand their needs and objectives. The overarching objective is most commonly the optimal utilization of our technology to accomplish targeted business or community objectives. This creates a win/win scenario that drives long term loyalty and high lifetime value. This alignment helps both parties avoid drifting into zero sum game thinking and actions.
We recently worked with a customer to develop major refinements to one of our products that will not only increase revenue but reduce labor burden while elevating the resident experience. We started by establishing a shared understanding of the customer’s goals and objectives. This led to identifying specific customer needs that were enhancements to our established functionality but were on our roadmap for future development. This presented a win/win scenario to go above and beyond to fulfill the additional customer requirements while gaining direct customer engagement that accelerated our software development. As a result, the customer was very pleased, and they have already begun to see significant benefits. ServingIntel’s collaborative approach is the number one reason customers select us as the senior living dining POS provider of choice. We often speak about our “why” or our purpose behind what we do. We are also proud of our “what” or the products and services we provide. However, many suppliers can provide technology. I have to laugh every time I hear the senior living industry speak about technology as if technology solved problems and drove benefits all by itself. Perhaps one day this will be true. But, until then, technology will be used by humans and those humans will benefit from ServingIntel’s unique recipe for collaboration to help senior living communities realize the full potential of dining.
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